Awesome writing, incredible flight. Be sure to read all the parts.
I've flown in waterplanes more than once from Ranger Lake in Northern Ontario and that take off story had me biting my nails. The pilot on one of those flights said that if you didn't end up with a few branches in the struts that it wasn't really close. Definitely an old timer trying to put some more fear into his passengers but judging by the number of patches on the floats it wasn't complete nonsense. Water take-offs (and landings) are an entirely different experience than on land, especially on rivers.
A side point: the Boeing 314 was a huge plane: a double decker with passenger compartment (seating and sleeping) above and a dining room and lounge below.
Reading about the 314 has suddenly triggered a memory for me about the Hughes H-4 Hercules (another huge flying boat from the same era, though never made it to production). That was another massive aircraft/flying boat.
From there, I recall a movie where Yogi Bear and his mates stole the Hercules (read: Spruce Goose) for some reason. And then I went all nostalgic.
If you ever happen to visit Portland, Oregon, I strongly recommend heading down to the Evergreen Aviation Museum - seeing the Spruce Goose in person is just breathtaking.
I second this (though it’s in McMinnville, about an hour south of Portland). Quite a collection of aircraft and spacecraft. Next door you kids can go in a pool with a water slide that starts in a 747 on top of a building!
Plus your taxes paid for it (via a CIA front company)!
If anyone finds themselves in the West of ireland, I strongly recommend the Flying Boat Museum in Foynes, across the estuary from Shannon Airport. This was the first port of call / refueling stop for Transatlantic Clipper flights (and also where the Irish Coffee was invented to warm incoming passengers deplaning off a long flight in an unpressurized cabin).
They have a replica Boeing 314 which you are free to walk around. It's fascinating to see the cabin out from seating to sleeping areas.
A great story. It reminds me of Southern Mail and Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A different era altogether. FWIW, the Oakland Air Museum has the City of Cardiff, a Solent which is similar to the Clipper.
Great story. But doesn’t it seem like flying westward wound up being more dangerous and putting them closer to contact with the Japanese that flying the return route via Fiji, Kiribati, Hawaii?
No, consider the course of the war; immediately after taking Pearl Harbor, Japan also attacked the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and the Dutch and French East Indies. In Europe it would have been called Blitzkreig. All thorough 1942 they headed south along the chain of islands towards Australia. Even in December the pacific route was dangerous. The west route put the largest amount of distance between the plane and the Japanese home islands.
You could imagine a southern route Aukland -> Papa'ete, Hanga Roa -> Lima which was probably completely out of any military risk, but there would not have been facilities, most notably fuel.
Right, east across the southern pacific would make sense if there were refueling stops. But in terms of going west they wound up going via Indonesia which the Japanese busy invading, yet Fiji, Kiribati, and Hawaii weren’t being invaded (and Fiji never was, not sure about Kiribati). There may have been naval traffic they would have to overfly they were concerned about I suppose.
We're talking the first 30 days of the war. Singapore hadn't fallen yet, nor had Djakarta. Even though Darwin had been bombed (and my grandmother said that left her convinced that the whole country was about to be invaded) in reality Australia was a long way from Japanese forces. (Of course so was Hawaii).
I was wrong by the way about French Indochina which had been taken after the fall of France.
So hairy, but not as hairy as it would be two months later. They couldn't know that at the time of course, but they had little choice. The only other alternative would have been to stay in Aukland and then be sucked up into the US war machine as MacArthur retreated to Australia.
I can't edit, so I want to clarify that when I wrote, "first 30 days of the war" I meant from the perspective of the plane's crew and most of the regions they planned to fly through.
There were millions in Japan, Korea, Manchuria, Indochina, Germany, France, Poland, etc for whom the war had been going on for years or decades.
The plane was essentially a bomber. A very big bomber designed for range. Under no circumstances was this plane to fall into enemy hands. Had they been in some older commercial plane then I am sure they could have considered their chances going East but due to the fact that they were in command of some highly advanced 'dual use' technology, going anywhere near the enemy was not an option. Because of the progress of the war and how the seaplane ended up defunct we do not appreciate that sea planes were serious high tech and vast expense.
Great read, I love longform writing. Coincidentally, my grandfather flew Clipper boats for Pan Am. He started out in biplanes, and the last aircraft he flew was the 707. What a change in technology!
Weight. On warships an allowance is often given to an increased weight of paint over the ship's life, which can be significant enough to affect calculations. For an aircraft that's obviously less acceptable.
I believe it was because they were going to be flying through a war zone and did not want the US and Pan Am insignia on the planes. Of course, it actually helped them when they flew into the Dutch port as the Dutch flighters saw the US flag and backed off.
